


talking recklessly

by bog gremlin (tomatocages)



Series: nonsexual intimacy prompts [10]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backrubs, Late Night Conversations, Love Confessions, M/M, Massage, Missing Scene, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Post-Episode: s06e05 The Black Paladins, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27423937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomatocages/pseuds/bog%20gremlin
Summary: The benefit of Keith rubbing Shiro’s sore shoulders is that Shiro can keep his back to him. It facilitates a conversation that’s been a long time coming.Post "The Black Paladins." Shiro's back from the dead, again.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: nonsexual intimacy prompts [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1838314
Comments: 8
Kudos: 82





	talking recklessly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coffeeonthebrunhild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeeonthebrunhild/gifts).



> Written for the nonsexual intimacy prompt "shoulder rubs" and [originally posted on Twitter](https://twitter.com/boggremlin/status/1324383553837289473) 11/5/2020.

[...] What if

you and I need to wade in together, talking

recklessly—not silent, not shouting,

but fierce in listening [...]

\- [_Hard Talk_](https://wearesage.org/poem-hard-talk/), Lisa Rome

* * *

After Shiro wakes up from the dead, it takes a while to feel like he’s actually part of the body he inhabits. Coran suggests grounding exercises, whatever that means, which is how Shiro finds himself attempting to follow along with the Altean version of yoga without benefit of having two arms. Things end, predictably and suddenly, in a heap. Shiro is not used to having only one arm. His balance is a clusterfuck.

Hunk is the one to suggest massage. It seems like a more rational approach, and one Shiro is familiar with; he had a great many massages, back before the Kerberos mission, as both a form of therapy for his disease and to help combat muscle fatigue after each training sequence. The only shortfall now is the lack of a trained masseuse. 

Krolia takes pity on the sorry scene and gently coaxes her son into practicing on her own shoulders, until Keith is confident enough to offer the service to Shiro. Aside from the desperate hug once Shiro woke from his troubling dreams, he and Keith haven’t touched. Possibly Keith feels responsible about the arm, or bereft by Shiro’s almost-death. Shiro could say that he hasn’t the faintest idea; but he remembers putting his hands over Keith’s when they piloted Black back to the others, before Shiro even thought he might get a shot at being alive again. He knows exactly how close he’d like to keep Keith, and that’s exactly why he moved into Pidge’s lion, despite making noise about how Pidge is the smallest of them and Shiro will have more space. Shiro does not want space. He’s had enough of it. But the scar on Keith’s face is a reproach.

The benefit of Keith tending to Shiro’s sore shoulders, though, is that Shiro can keep his back to him. It facilitates a conversation that’s been a long time coming. 

“A little to the left,” Shiro instructs, melting under Keith’s fingers pressing hard into the meat of his shoulder. Even the mangled port aches, and the bruising pressure leaves a giddy relief in its wake. “You can press harder, I’m not made of glass. I love you too.”

“Like this?” Keith asks, and almost loses his balance when he registers the last of what Shiro’s said. “Oh — you remember.”

“I was watching you,” Shiro reminds him. “From Black.” Shiro had seen a lot of things from that vantage point and he doesn’t really want to talk about them. For Keith, though, he will. 

“Keith,” he says. “You gave up out there.” He’s careful to keep the anger out of his voice, because it’s been so long since he had one of his own. He doesn’t want to sully this moment, the care Keith is taking with him, with his own frustration. Shiro is used to feeling any number of feelings, from incandescent rage to the relentless ho-humming depression of facing down an unending war. 

“Not really,” Keith answers, resuming his ministrations. “Not the way you think.”

“Tell me,” Shiro says, dry as dust, “What  _ do _ I think?”

“The fight — the fall,” Keith answers. He takes a minute to dig into a particularly stubborn knot, and the relief when it gives way makes Shiro gasp aloud. It’s atrociously corporeal; Shiro loves it. “I wasn’t giving up.”

“What were you doing?” It had looked like giving up, from where Shiro’d been watching from the astral plane. It had looked a damn sight like throwing in the towel, which Keith was horrifically prone to do, if he thought the situation warranted it. 

“I was tired,” Keith says. “But that wasn’t it. I didn’t want to leave you alone.”

“That wasn’t me, that was a clone,” Shiro says. It’s the first time he’s used that word,  _ clone, _ and it doesn’t feel as awkward in his mouth as he thought it might. 

“Well, it’s your body now,” Keith prods at the edges of Shiro’s abrupt amputation. “Your soul. Your bones.”

“And we’ve established that I wasn’t the only me in the universe, so why you felt compelled to plummet to your doom with a copy — ”

“But I called you,” Keith says. Despite the tension in his voice, in his hands, Shiro realizes that Keith is not trying to hurt him: he’s trying to make what is murky crystal clear. “I called for you and Black. And you came. I don’t know why you think that’s giving up, not when you’re always going on about being part of a team. I wouldn’t do that to you.” 

And Shiro does remember that: the look on Keith’s face, the way his eyes were closed in pain and how they opened to meet Black’s approach. Her shadow had blotted out the light waiting to swallow them. He hadn’t connected that with the agony he’d felt in his insubstantial prison, the feeling of a knife going into his breastbone (if he’d had a breast bone, or if he could have felt a knife — but he supposes that’s the point).

Guilt rushes in then, more terrible than it had been when he’d realized the provenance of the wound on Keith’s face. 

“I might have, before,” Keith continues, gentle and devastating. The words are an abomination and Shiro holds as still as possible despite the pinch and rub of Keith’s fingers along his spine, so he can absorb their impact. “But I remembered what you said, about how I couldn’t give up on myself. And I’ve never given up on you.”

“Keith,” Shiro says, helplessly. 

“Don’t be mad,” Keith tells him. Now that it’s been said out loud, Shiro is overcome by the knowledge that everything Keith has ever said to him has been said in tones of love. “I chose you. But Shiro, I chose me, too.”


End file.
